Douglas F. Morgan, Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University

A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society, Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, editors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, Pp. 240, cloth.

The Founders, the Constitution and Public Administration: A Conflict in World Views, Michael W. Spicer. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1995, Pp. 114, paper.

Democracy, Bureaucracy and Character: Founding Thought, William D. Richardson. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1997, Pp. 201. paper

Bureaucracy and Self-Government: Reconsidering the Role of Public Administration in American Politics, Brian J. Cook. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Pp. 201, $, paper.

An astute observer of the American bureaucratic experience once described it as a "history of sheep in wolves clothing" (Karl, 1987). From the early days of the Boston Tea Party to Vice President Gore’s current National Performance Review Initiative, bureaucratic institutions and officialdom have more often been viewed as the enemy of democratic governance than viewed as its friend.

Organizational theorists, political scientists, and public interest groups of all stripes and colors continually reinforce the popular notion that bureaucracy cannot be trusted by reminding us of a variety of organizational pathologies to which bureaucracies inevitably succumb. Sometimes these pathologies take the form of the kind of administrative excesses currently ascribed to the I.N.S. and I.R.S. Sometimes the pathologies result from the co-opting behavior of interest groups which may, over time, cause bureaucratic organizations to lose sight of their mission. Still others point to the inherent tendency of the principle of hierarchy itself to undermine the realization of full human potential. And finally, there are the pathologies of myopia, redtape, and lack of responsiveness that serves as the focus of much of the reinvention agenda. For each of these pathologies there is a corresponding set of correctives, including more vigilant oversight, more open policy making processes, more of the right kind of rules and less of the wrong kind, more restrictions on campaign financing and the activities of political action committees, more organizational decentralization and employee empowerment. In short, all correctives rely on introducing appropriate structures and processes that counter the pathological behaviors which reformists are seeking to control or eliminate. All seek in some ways to produce sheep that will make bureaucratic wolves safer for democracy.

The "Reinvention of Government Movement" is the most current and popular version of this on-going effort to make bureaucracy safe for our democratic system of government. This reinvention movement pits the virtues of the free enterprise market system against the vices of an outmoded constitutional structure that has become incapacitated by bureaucratic inertia. Consider for a moment the following two universes of discourse that the current "reinvention debate" has created:

One of the more subtle, and frequently overlooked, consequences of the universe of discourse introduced by the reinvention debate is the loss of focus on the role that bureaucracy plays in our constitutional system of governance. It is almost as if our constitutional structure of authority is irrelevant to solving the problems that the Reinvention agenda has set for itself. Bureaucracy is seen as a stumbling block to the kind of private sector efficiency and effectiveness that produces results and satisfied customers. Consequently, most of the efforts to reinvent government assume that by simply substituting the entrepreneurial model for the bureaucratic model we will be able to get private sector results. These assumptions beg the question of what purposes the public sector has been legally authorized to undertake and what role bureaucracy plays in achieving these purposes. Ronald Moe, a careful student of the National Performance Initiative, has noted with some alarm the absence of constitutional and legal considerations in evaluating the applicability of various reinvention initiatives to the public sector.

The four books under review provide a rich and powerful corrective to the limitations of the current narrow preoccupation with the Reinvention of government agenda. Taken together, they answer the questions that the current debate begs: 1) What is our American constitution for? 2) What is the role of the professional career bureaucracy in helping our constitutional system of governance achieve its ends? In answering these questions, the four books under review help broaden the universe of discourse and, in so doing, help us gain a greater appreciation of the unintended consequences of continuing to treat American bureaucracy as sheep in wolves clothing.

Stephen Elkin and Karol Soltan’s A New Constitutionalism is an exquisite collection of essays which recover and restore an older and much more complex understanding of a constitution than currently prevails in most popular and academic writings . Their volume of nine essays takes its bearings from the Latin noun constitutio, which refers to the "‘shape,’ ‘composition,’ or ’establishment’ of a people in their political association....The constitution of a regime, then, does not only set out offices and powers, the frame of government. It is , more generally, an "ordering" by which the organization (order) of something gives it its constitution. Thus, a constitution not only limits a government but forms a polity, enabling it to act by giving it form (p. 125. )" This architectonic view makes all political, social, and economic phenomena the proper object of study, including both public and private dimensions of life. When this approach is applied to the American regime, the purpose of our Constitution is rendered complex and problematic. The Constitution exists not simply to limit abuses of power for the sake of preserving individual liberty, but it exists for two other purposes as well: 1) to create successful social problem solving institutions and 2) "to form the character of those who act within [these institutions] and, to a lesser degree, those who otherwise come into contact with them. Political institutions are educative and thus have an ethical dimension (pp. 117-118) ."

The collection of essays in A New Constitutionalism is divided into three Parts: The two essays by Elkin and Soltan in Part One - Introduction to A New Constitutionalism - introduce readers to what is meant by the term, "new constitutionalism"; The four essays in Part Two - Varieties of Constitutionalist Theory - are programmatic statements that explore some of the essential features and consequences of "new constitutionalism" for traditional political and social science, for practical politics, for citizen education, and, finally, for the nexus between the public, private and nonprofit spheres; The three essay in Part III - The American Regime - illustrate and apply some of the themes set forth in the first two sections to the actual operation of the current American political process.

In Part One the two essays by Soltan and Elkin set forth the main theme of the book and, in so doing, define what the authors mean by the term, "new constitutionalism". "It is a program for the study of political and economic phenomena from the perspective of an institutional designer ....[It is an argument] against the narrowly legal conceptions, against the approaches that see constitutionalism as a matter of institutional and intellectual history, and -finally - against the view of constitutionalism as aiming only to protect individual liberties by limiting the scope and power of government...(pp. 4-5) ". Since the aim of "new constitutionalism" is reconstructive, it has more in common with traditional constitutionalism and classical political economy than with modern social science which "has been deeply influenced by the hermeneutics of suspicion as represented by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (p. 5)." In place of the "hermeneutics of suspicion" the authors call for the creation of "a practical political science, one of use to citizens and anyone else who wishes...to design institutions to achieve valued political ends (p.1)."

The principal sections of Soltan’s essay are devoted to a critique of several important efforts to develop a design-oriented social science through what the author calls, Rational Reconstruction. He examines hermeneutics and generative grammar (represented by the work of Habermas and Chomsky), the legal and ethical writings of Dworkin, Rawls and Norman Daniels, and, finally, the philosophy of sciences, represented by the writings of Lakatos and Newton-Smith. While Soltan applauds all of these efforts to ground proper standards of validity and rightness on the tacit competence of ordinary (average) citizens, he is critical of the assumption that tacit knowledge is sufficient. Tacit knowledge is "only a partial account of competence, which we improve and complement by further investigation....We should not be satisfied with rational reconstruction alone (p.8)." Soltan reaches a similar conclusion after examining the reconstructive efforts undertaken by Bucannan, Lindblom, and Horvat in the field of political economy.

Elkin’s introductory essay extends Soltan’s exploration of the roots of new constitutionalism, but provides a far more detailed account of these traditions. Elkin argues that the "new constitutionalism" is built on two principal traditions. One is classical constitutionalism which is preoccupied with the need to limit the arbitrary exercise of political power. The other tradition grows out of welfare economics, and particularly, the work of Kenneth Arrow who contends that the central task of institutional design is to reconcile democratic control with the need for economic efficiency. After discussing variations on these themes, Elkin concludes by listing four questions that must be addressed if the new constitutionalism is to develop into a powerful body of theory: 1. How can a utilitarian and democratic concern for advancing social welfare through the exercise of governmental power be joined to the long-standing concern for reducing arbitrariness in the exercise of that power? 2. What sort of individual character should political institutions foster? 3. What principles shall guide the combination of the various institutions into a workable constitutional whole? 4. Can "new constitutionalism’s" concern for political design and the creation of good political regimes be defended against the charges that the goal is both impossible and too dangerous - impossible because of its complexity and dangerous because its prescriptive agenda may trample on individual liberties?

The four essays in Part two of New Constitutionalism provide a more systematic elaboration of the themes set forth by Elkin and Soltan in Part One. James Ceaser reviews the development of the discipline of political science over the past 30 years to explore how it has answered the question: what is significant to study? Another way of framing the question is: What are the significant ends or purposes for which political knowledge is sought? After reviewing how these questions have been answered by rational choice theorists, normative empiricists (Verba, Lindblom, Dahl), and new normativists (Rawls and Dworkin), Ceaser calls for a return to an older and, what he calls, a constitutional political science with its focus on whole regimes. Traditional political science has two virtues. It focuses on the kind of knowledge of regimes and what works to maintain or undermine them, rather than trying to understand variance. Second, it has the practical or human end of aiding legislators and citizens, thus favoring explanations that will have some practical use in particular cases.

In a very thought-provoking essay in Part Two, Soltan explores the two themes implicit in the double meaning of the word constitution. On the one hand, constitution refers to a process of creation with an emphasis on autonomy, free will, and the capacity to know and control one’s future. On the other hand, constitution refers to a boundary on power, with an emphasis on the limits of human competence, will, and the capacity to know and act in a world of uncertainty and ambiguity. The goal of the essay is "to make these themes both more general and more abstract", thereby transforming the themes into something Soltan calls "generic constitutionalism". Soltan accomplishes this task in two ways. First, he shows how the intellectual and political legacy of the Enlightenment has broadened the conflict between determinism and autonomy so that corporations and other forms of socially significant power have become subject to the same constraints of both countervailing powers and self-imposed rules that apply to nation states. Second, he shows how substantive, formal, and procedural considerations that lie at the core of our rule of law system have expanded outward from the public sector to influence the standards by which we judge institutions in general.

The reason generic constitutionalism is so important to Soltan is that it provides the foundation upon which to make his case for "new constitutionalism’s" two-fold political agenda. The first of Soltan’s political goals is to create, what I would call (in the spirit of Alastair McIntyre), a "tradition of practices" which can serve as a standard for distinguishing good from bad social change. The substantive, formal, and procedural tests of generic constitutionalism imbedded in the practices of our legal system provide Soltan with a balancing standard that distinguishes his approach from others who might give more weight to one element than another, such as "giving all power to the people". Soltan’s second political goal is to "encourage the process of constitutionalization in the private sphere, especially within the private corporation....Beyond the sphere of private organization, constitutionalism can reach further into the small scale of social interaction, into bargaining, for example. We need simply to restrain by more objective standards the manipulative politics that take place in negotiation (pp. 90-91)." By the end of Soltan’s essay, it becomes difficult to distinguish the public from the private sphere or to know what is uniquely characteristic of public authority.

Charles Anderson’s essay on "Pragmatic Liberalism" provides further justification for subjecting the private sphere to the disciplinary force of constitutionalism. Anderson distinguishes classical from pragmatic liberalism on the basis of the former’s assumptions regarding the capacity of individuals to develop rationally coherent accounts of their public and marketplace activities prior to taking action. Anderson argues that classical liberalism assumes too much.

In the concluding essay of Part Two, Elkin provides a summary overview of the three goals of a constitution: 1) To limit the arbitrary exercise of power; 2) To establish institutional arrangements for successful social problem-solving; and 3) To cultivate the appropriate character necessary for those to carry out their institutional responsibilities. What is most noteworthy about this chapter for career public administrators is its emphasis on the decisive role of local political institutions in cultivating the deliberative capacity of citizens to enable them to acquire and exercise virtuous judgment. "Deliberation is then the handmaiden of judgment, and it is as judges that constitutional citizens find their excellence (p. 138)".

The essays in Part III present three different theories of the essential constitutive features of the American regime. Theodore Lowi updates the argument that he first presented in the End of Liberalism (1979). Lowi agrees with Soltan and Anderson who argue in Part II that reduction of arbitrariness through law is the central standard by which constitutional regimes should be judged. According to Lowi, the American regime continues to fail in meeting this test because it delegates too much unguided and unchecked discretionary authority to the administrative branch of government, thereby allowing the policy process to be captured through a process of accommodation among competing elites. The conservative revolution triggered by the election of President Reagan did not result in any fundamental departure from the traditional liberal attachment to "the vulgar, mass democracy of the plebiscitary presidency and the immense size and power of the executive branch (p. 165)." The only difference between traditional liberalism and modern conservatism is the ends that each wants large amounts of discretionary administrative authority to serve. Lowi casts a plague on both houses, arguing that the defining feature of democratic governance is to be found in a well functioning legislative branch that sets clear standards to guide administrative judgment.

But what is to check the tendency of legislative bodies to accommodate competing interests at the expense of subverting clear legal standards and guidelines? The essay by Cass Sunstein provides one answer to this difficult question. Sunstein links three seemingly disparate areas of public law theory to argue that "reasoned analysis" and deliberation are the defining characteristics of a constitutional system of governance. Sunstein reviews the Madisonian model, contrasting the pluralist version of this tradition with the more republican conception which assumes that through discussion people can, in their capacities as citizens, escape private interests and engage in pursuit of the public good. Sunstein concludes that the Madisonian system of complex institutional and procedural checks was not only intended to serve the negative merit of mitigating against the adverse consequences of self-interested behavior, it was also intended to serve the positive merit of fostering the virtues of a deliberative democracy.

Sunstein shows how the interest in deliberative democracy has been furthered by development of American legal doctrine. For example, Sunstein argues that the development of the "heightened scrutiny" doctrine in interpreting the equal protection clause rests on an "underlying conception of representation [that] is Madisonian, and the understanding of politics is republican (p. 193)." The development of the "hard look doctrine" in administrative law is a similarly important innovation that subjects the administrative process to the disciplined requirement of "reasoned analysis", thus preventing agency decisions that are blindly responsive to political pressures or based on irrelevant considerations (p. 195).

The final essay in Part III by Edwin Haefele summarizes the four decisive features he believes constitute the peculiar excellence of the American republic: (1) self-government, (2) civic virtue, (3) state-economy relations, and (4) secular-sacred distinctions. Haefele’s most important contribution to this volume is the short section devoted to the Secular-Sacred Distinctions. The author argues that for most of our American history there was a widely shared belief among both leaders and followers that there was a divine purpose in the world. This belief has waned over time, with the consequence that the state "must bear all the responsibility for human happiness. Justice, fairness, equality, and all other human aspirations must be gained through the state by the efforts of its citizens....It is a mighty burden to put on secular institutions (p.215)."

A New Constitutionalism is a sweeping counter to the narrow universe of discourse provided by the current infatuation with the "reinvention movement". Undertaking the efficient and effective delivery of public services is only one of the goals of government and it may not be the most important goal. The authors of this volume remind us that, from a historical point of view, maintaining accountability within a rule of law system has been the most important standard against which we have measured the legitimacy of what American government does. To these dual goals of accountability and efficiency, the authors add a concern for cultivating the kind of citizen virtue that can sustain institutions necessary for maintaining democratic governance over the long hall. What emerges is a universe of discourse that focuses our attention on the purposes of government; the creation of citizenship; the maintenance of healthy social, economic, and political institutions; the cultivation of deliberative democratic processes, institutions, and citizens; and, finally, the role that law and constitutions can and should play in this nexus.

To some, the purpose of the authors may be indistinguishable from the goals of classical political philosophy found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. In short, some may read the Soltan and Elkin volume as a modern-day Aristotelian justification for the kind of constitutionalism which systematically takes on the task of cultivating moral virtue and intellectual excellence. This would be a mistake. While there is considerable similarity between classical Aristotelianism and the Soltan/Elkin volume in terms of the scope of constitutionalism they endorse, there are considerable differences in their ultimate justification for favoring an architectonic approach to constitutionalism.

Soltan and Elkin are in basic agreement with modern constitutionalism’s goal of promoting individual liberty. But they take issue with a narrow approach that reduces this goal to a single objective like protecting rights (Dworkin and Hayek), maximizing popular control (Lindblom), promoting equality (Dahl and Horvat), or maximizing freedom of choice (Buchanan and Arrow). Instead, they view our system of democratic governance as multidimensional and open to on-going redefinition. They "emphasize the role of rational deliberation as a way of discovering the public good." Institutions are viewed "as preference formers, as communities of inquiry and as deliberative bodies, and not simply as interest aggregators (p. 14)." While these institutions provide the conditions for the development and generation of individual moral judgments about the common good, through institutional change the authors welcome the opportunity for these judgments to be altered, thereby creating the "possibility for moral growth" (p. 7). The volume’s emphasis on the discovery of the common good through deliberation is squarely centered in the hermeneutical tradition of Habermas and the social construction tradition of Berger and Luckmann. These traditions stand far apart from Aristotelian constitutionalism where natural law provides a standard against which to measure the moral growth of individuals and the justice of regimes. Elkin and Soltan seek to recover the depth and complexity of Aritotelian constitutionalism without the natural law tradition upon which it rested.

The New Constitutionalism leaves us wondering what democratic governance is most about. Is it about maintaining the rule of law? Is it about maintaining legislative supremacy? Is it about democratic responsiveness? Is it about maintaining the substantive, procedural, and formal integrity of the American constitution? Is it about maintaining the kinds of social and economic institutions that support democratic ends? Or is it about cultivating the kind of citizen virtue that is consistent with the demands of constitutionalism? How we answer each of these questions sets the stage for quite a different role for career professional administrators. The three books by Spicer, Richardson, and Cook, provide increasingly expansive roles for career administrators within our system of democratic governance.

Michael Spicer’s The Founders, the Constitution, and Public Administration provides a classical liberal interpretation of the role of government in general and the role of career public administration in particular. Trained in the "dismal science" of economics Professor Spicer has been "struck by the distinctively optimistic and frankly almost utopian view of human nature and government exhibited by many of [his] colleagues in public administration....(p. xi)." Spicer takes this difference in world views as the starting point for comparing the worldview underlying American constitutional governance with the worldview of many public administration writers.

Professor Spicer begins his essay with a summary account of the multitude of factors that have contributed in the past 30 years to eroding the legitimacy of the administrative state, public administration as a practice, and the role of professional career administrators. These factors need to be taken seriously because they undermine the ability to recruit and maintain high quality personnel, erode morale and reduce productivity, and, finally, "encourage political leaders to impose overly restrictive controls on public administrators that hamper their flexibility and raise the costs of providing services to taxpayers (p.5)."

Spicer reviews various attempts to rescue public administration from its crisis of legitimacy by seeking to ground public administration in constitutional principles. He finds such attempts to be laudable but misleading. They are laudable because, like his own work, they provide a standard against which to assess the proper role of the administrative function within our system of democratic governance. However, they are misleading because they misread the constitution by focusing on "the intent of the framers" rather than the "worldview of the framers". The purpose of Spicer’s book is to show how the worldview of the Founders of the American constitution is divergent from existing literature in public administration, thus enabling us to modify our vision of public administration "so as to render it more compatible with the worldview of the Founders (p. 10)."

In Chapter 2 Spicer sets the stage for his comparison of the bureaucratic and constitutional worldviews by outlining and illustrating the differences between the rational worldview represented by the writings of Rousseau, Hegel, Condorcet, Comte, Mill and Dewey and the anti-rational worldview represented by the writings of Locke, Hume, Ferguson, Smith, and Burke. In Chapter 3 Spicer uses this distinction between the rational and anti-rational wordviews to contrast the administrative and constitutional worldviews. He cites various writers from both the founding of the Constitution and public administration to show that the Constitution rests on a anti-rational set of assumptions in contrast to the rational assumptions of public administration.

In Chapter 4 Spicer turns from the evidence of founding writers to the evidence of logic to reinforce his argument that the constitutional worldview is anti-rational. Spicer organizes chapter 4 around the following question: What is the logic of a constitution? He provides the following four answers to this question, relying largely on the work of Hayek: 1) To check the use of discretionary power to promote ones own interest, 2) To prevent the use of discretionary power by those who may force others to accept their vision of a "good society", 3) To guard against the unintentional exploitation of citizens by government officials as a result of error, miscalculation, or other negative consequences that arise from the need to act with imperfect knowledge. actions that , and 4) To make the best use of practical knowledge that is widely distributed throughout the social order.

Chapter 5 explores the two dominant visions of public administration to determine which one is most compatible with a constitution designed to check power. One vision, which Spicer labels discretionist, "sees public administration as almost an independent or autonomous agent for the advancement of government actions that promote the ‘public interest’." The other, which Spicer labels "instrumentalist", "sees public administration almost entirely as an instrument of the political will of a community, as expressed through its elected political leaders. Public administrators, according to this vision, must ascertain and carry out the wishes of the elected representatives of the people (p. 54)." Spicer uses the classic debate between Herman Finer and Carl Friedrich to illustrate and test the adequacy of these two visions. Spicer concludes that both visions fail to meet the single litmus paper test of checking governmental power. The instrumentalism of Finer gives too much unchecked power to the legislature with the resulting danger of a tyranny by the majority, while Friedrich’s reliance on professional discretion gives too much power to career administrators, thus leaving the system open to usurpation of authority by officialdom.

In Chapter 6 Spicer provides the outlines of what he calls an "anti-rational public administration" that is capable of both checking legislative power and, at the same time, checking itself. Under a system of "constrained discretion", Spicer argues that public administrators must have the power to challenge elected officials "by raising questions..., by trying to persuade them to sometimes change course, and by interpreting political directives in a fashion that permits them to limit the costs imposed upon citizens (p. 68)." But this administrative discretion to limit power in the name of protecting citizens needs to be constrained both by administrative rules and procedures and by citizen participation. Spicer uses Kenneth Culp Davis to make his case for the importance of self-initiated administrative rules and procedures. Citizen participation in the administrative area provide professional administrators with practical knowledge concerning potentially harmful effects that administrative decision may have on citizens. Spicer concludes chapter 6 with an ironic confession that the anti-rational bureaucracy he is proposing reflects all of the "characteristics that are commonly thought of as ‘defects’ of bureaucracy: inertia, inflexibility, and impersonality (p. 78)."

Because Spicer admits the need for the exercise of administrative discretion, in Chapter 7 he is forced to address the ethical principles that ought to guide this discretion. After giving unqualified endorsement to the principle of personal honesty, Spicer explores three of the most commonly discussed principles: neutrality, utility, and social equity. He finds each of these principles seriously deficient. The rule of neutrality is inconsistent with Spicer’s desire to have administrators check the legislative abuse of power. While the utilitarian principle may on some occasions provide greater protection to minority interests than the principle of simple majority rule, it is no guarantee against policies that may impose severe costs on some citizens. Finally, Spicer concludes that ambiguity and conflict over the meaning of the term "social equity" makes it wholly unsuitable "to provide an operational guide for ethical decision making (p.89)."

In contrast to ethical principles of neutrality, utility and social equity, which are found to have little or no use, Spicer argues that the principle of common law reasoning provides the most promising basis for ethical action in the exercise of administrative dissection. By common law reasoning, Spicer means using examples as the basis for generating principles or rules of action. Similar to the common law reasoning process used by judges and described by Edward Levi, administrators should use the comparison of similar cases to generate rules which then can be applied to subsequent cases. Through this process of reasoning from the particular to the general, and then back to the particular, administrators, like judges, can undertake a creative process in which the past can be reinterpreted from the perspective of the present in order to accommodate future needs. This process is defended by Spicer on four grounds: it reduces uncertainty in the exercise of administrative discretion; it provides consistency in the treatment of similarly situated citizens; it draws upon the knowledge of past decisions to guide and inform future decisions; and it provides assistance to administrators in checking the abuse of power by elected officials.

Spicer concludes Chapter 7 with a defense of the norm of consensus as a useful handmaiden in solving the potential ethical problems that can arise from the exercise of administrative discretion. Because consensus serves to limit the costs that public administrators can impose upon citizens, Spicer argues that "public administrators should take a role of leadership in advocating and building support for consensus decisions (p.95)."

Spicer’s emphasis on the role of bureaucracy in checking the potential abuse of power, whether it is the abuse of elected officials, career administrators, or the citizenry itself, falls short of the purposes that some envision being served by the career public service. These expanded purposes are more systematically set forth in the two works by Richardson and Cook. Richardson defends the important role that administrators play in preserving the Founding ideal, while Cook emphasizes the constitutive role that administrators play in the on-going democratic coveting process. Both works explicitly endorse a more expanded role for the exercise of discretionary administrative authority than the role envisioned by Spicer.

William Richardson’s, Democracy, Bureaucracy, and Character uses the lens of "Founding Thought" to shed light on the current revitalization movement taking place in the United States. This revitalization movement is urging the restoration of a set of horizontal means of social control and wealth creation-allocation as a replacement for the formal role traditionally played by government and the professional career bureaucracy. As Richardson argues in his "Introduction", this debate results from two contradictory elements. On the one hand, "[d]emocracy "assumes a horizontal form of human association, stresses voluntarism, and promotes individualism". On the other hand, bureaucracy "assumes the need for vertical organization; it relies on technical expertise, exercises formal authority and impartial rules, and is collectivist in orientation" (p. 15). The goal of the book is "to bridge [these] admittedly contradictory elements of American public administration and the regime it is intended to serve by examining the complex interaction of several elements. The binding thread that will run through every discussion, though, will be a proper understanding of and appreciation for the American character (p. 15)." In short, Richardson’s goal is not so much to take sides in the current "revitalization" debate, but to ensure that the debate is infomed and guided by a recognition that there is a "peculiar American character that has ...a decisive effect not only on the nature and kind of policies that can be introduced within the regime but also on the kind of governors who ultimately come to serve it (p. 16)." The goal, then, is to provide public officials contemplating the introduction of a given policy with a more informed understating of what the character of the American people will bear.

Richardson uses "Founding Thought" as the lens to discuss this issue, because he believes the efforts of the founding generation were consummately informed by the need to create institutions that were both consistent with the virtues of the American people and would, in turn, cultivate these virtues. In Chapters II and III Richardson summarizes the founding generation’s understanding of the kind of human character upon which their newly formed institutions of governance rested. In Chapter II Richardson summarizes these assumptions, which will be familiar to most readers. Richardson argues that the founders assumed that the vast majority of human beings were motivated by personal passions and desires, rather than by a disinterested understanding of the common good founded in reason. Instead of seeing the common good as a check on private interests and a moral guide for the cultivation of human virtue, the founders argued, like their eighteenth century predecessors, that the common good was derivative from rather than constitutive of private interests.

Since this view created a very high probability that democracy would succumb to the misguided passions and interests of a dominant majority faction, the founders crafted three solutions to prevent this from happening, thereby making democracy safe for democrats: 1) They created institutions that would foster individual acquisitiveness so that "the divisions of society into different interests and parties" would block the formation of majority factions; 2) They created institutions that could operate over a large land mass, thereby dispersing citizens and serving as a further barrier to the formation of majority factions; and 3) They created a system of indirect democracy, or representation, to filter the influence of citizen-produced impulses of passions and interests. Richardson concludes Chapter 2 with a reminder that one of the consequences of these assumptions for career administrators is that it creates a need for American public servants to have "a character-forming responsibility" without placing them on some kind of pedastal to serve as guardians and guarantors of the regime values for the American public (p. 31).

In Chapter 3 Richardson explores how and why public administration has departed from this initial founding vision and over time has acquired a special and distinctive role in our system of democratic governance. He argues that it occurred with the politics-administration dichotomy which was "rooted originally in Wilson’’s initial misreading [of his German sources] and revised and nourished by those governmental and civil service reformists who had a distinctively political (if not partisan) interest in seeing it flourish....[It ] gave a cloak of legitimacy to the efforts to shift a large part of that function to a nonelected ‘aristocracy of talent’ or class of disinterested administrative generalists (p. 39)." These initial missteps were further reinforced by the usefulness of the principle of neutrality to answer those who would ask: By what right do you exercise your discretion? With the demise of the legitimacy of claims based on special talent and partisan political loyalty, the principle of neutrality served two practical purposes: 1) It helped save administrators from becoming a target when the air becomes filled with partisan invective; and 2) It provideed a rationale that supports the "operation of modern science....Public administration contended that like its peers in the physical and social sciences, "it also possessed a unique from of wisdom or expertise about government... and most especially about the more technical or structural aspects of governing, such as budgeting, organization, and personnel (p. 46)." From this alliance it was but a short step to the establishment of professional associations and schools of public administration designed to nurture the accumulation of additional specialized knowledge (pp. 45- 46)."

In Chapter 4 Richardson returns to the founding vision to explain how the concern for public spiritedness found in the writings of the framers can be reconciled with their reliance on acquisitive individualism operating within the framework of a large commercial republic. Richardson reconciles this tension in three ways. First, he draws on the writings of Horowitz and Diamond to point out that, while the Founders were concerned about the cultivation of other-regarding qualities in public officials and the citizenry at large, they developed political "arrangements and institutions that would ensure the "existence and security of the government , even in the absence of political virtue.... (52)." Second, Richardson argues that "the Founders gave the phrase ‘public-spiritedness’ a distinctly modern definition, one stressing the compatibility of self interest, moderation, and service to the community (p. 52)." Finally, in the remaining section of Chapter 4 Richardson argues that the Founder relied on the following three sources for fostering publicly virtuous governors: 1) formal constitutional correctives, 2) concern for honor and reputation, and 3) nurturing certain enduring excellences through education. Richardson could have significantly strengthened his thesis in this section by demonstrating to the reader exactly how these civic-creating mechanisms were thought to work and why they are consistent with the principles of acquisitive individualism. While answers to these questions can be found by piecing together his analysis and evidence from other sections of the book (especially the excellent examples in chapter 6), for the average student this will be too much effort and the significance of Richardson’s point may get lost.

Richardson concludes Chapter 4 with the observation that "[i]n combination with the emphasis on technical expertise or public management, the lack of any identifiable community of public administrators may have seriously eroded the foundations upon which the Founders relied to ensure that the regime would be served by publicly virtuous administrators capable of being effectively superintended by public opinion (p. 65)." It is the possible remedies to this problem that Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted. Chapter 5 focuses on the remedy of education and the specific issue of whether governors (including public administrators) need special education to carry out their duties in a virtuous manner. Richardson reviews the purposes of contemporary public education and concludes that its purpose is unabashedly practical. This prompts him to ask whether this purpose and the teaching about ethics is "an inevitable consequence of the Founders’ deliberate decision to foster lifestyles rather than a way of life (p. 70)?" Presumably, this question arises because a "lifestyle orientation" makes a concern for virtue, ethics, and values a matter of private concern to individuals, thus leaving the needs of the public sector and civic virtue unattended. Richardson reviews various educational views that influenced the founding generation, including classical republicanism, and the individual views of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. Richardson concludes where he began: "While agreeing on the need to teach practical kinds of knowledge, these Founders were surprisingly unanimous on the end of education: to produce virtuous citizens who would serve the public (p. 71)." In short, Richardson is less concerned about the need to develop a special kind of education to ensure publicly virtuous administrators than he is concerned about the need for these governors to understand the character of the citizenry so that they can craft public policies that are compatible with this character. For Richardson this is the heart of the ethical obligation and responsibility of professional career administrators. This purpose is made clear in Chapter 6.

In Chapter 6 Richardson takes up the question of whether critics of the modern administrative state are correct in their concern that big government and its bureaucratic apparatus to support government insurance, welfare, and regulatory programs erode self-reliance and individual initiative. Richardson answers this concern by showing how the design and operation of a variety of New Deal Programs (such as The Works Project Administration, The Civil Conservation Corps, The Public Works Administration, The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, The National Recovery Administration, the Social Security Administration, etc.) took into account, as well as reinforced, the three character traits that the Founders thought were an integral part of the American regime - individualism, acquisitiveness, and reputation. Rather than undermine self-reliance and individual initiative, Richardson argues that "the New Deal is politically instructive because it demonstrates how public administration may be used in ways that are both positive and congruent with the understanding of the American character that guided the Founders (p. 102)."

In Chapter 7 Richardson summarizes the argument of his book by asking how it is possible to reconcile the Founders’ seemingly contradictory concern for virtuous rulers and citizens while creating a republic that did not require a virtuous people for its sustenance. His answer is that public administrators can not be excluded from the Founders’ assumption "that the people are self-interested and moved by a variety of motives, only some of which are likely to be realized through serving the public good (p. 119)....In the final analysis, the Constitution was intended to be an elevating device and a means of ensuring that all people who seek to govern - including public administrators - must do so with the backing of popular consent, no matter how virtuous or benevolent they might be (p. 120)."

In the Epilogue Richardson speculates about the implications of his analysis for some of the current political initiatives, especially the Contract with America and the Reinvention of Government movement. He suggests that "[t]he combination of decentralization of powers, less uniformity of standards, and increased responsibilities for both administrators and citizens may have some positive effects on the quality of citizenship (p. 125)." But these positive effects depend on administrators using their enhanced administrative discretion arising from the combination of decentralization and flattened hierarchies to organize both internal and external support, to develop a carefully honed understanding of the true needs of the community, and to acquire the capacity to communicate well at all levels (p. 128). In short, Richardson speculates that administrators will be required to take more seriously the need to court public opinion as one of their standards for approbation. He admits that this places public administrators in the seemingly contradictory position of needing to "resist ill-considered democratic impulses" while simultaneously bolstering its legitimacy "by linking itself much more thoroughly to the people". It is precisely this contradiction that serves as the primary purpose of Richardson book. Quite simply, it is intended to provide "public administrators with the necessary ballast to survive some of the political changes that are being contemplated (p. 128)."

Brian Cook’s Bureaucracy and Self-Government, like the works of Spicer and Richardson, reconsiders the role of public administration in American politics. This reconsideration begins, like the others, with a recognition that bureaucracy is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. Cook notes, however, the ambivalence of this crises. On the one hand, American citizens attack bureaucracy in the abstract. On the other hand, "when government bureaucrats function as the instrumentalities of individual welfare, serving people’s wants and needs, as is usually the case in close, specific, client-oriented encounters, public administration wins positive public judgments (p. 3)." This contradiction suggests to Cook that the crises of legitimacy has less to do with the merely instrumental role that public bureaucracies perform in the delivery of services and more to do with the constitutive role that administrators play in shaping public policy and the pattern of interactions among citizens.

Cook, in agreement with Elkins and Soltan, identifies the constitutive role of public administration with substantive "reasoning about forms and purposes. Constitutive rationality refers to individuals, or even societies, making sense of the composition of something, reasoning about how to make something into what they wish it to be, or even deciding what it is they desire in the first place (p. 5)." Cook does a masterful job of clarifying the distinction between instrumental and constitutive reasoning and documenting why the instrumental role of public administration has received almost exclusive attention. From the standpoint of teaching students who may have little background in classical political theory, Cook’s account is perhaps the most accessible I have read. After reading his account, it will be easy for students to understand why the average citizen is so suspicious of the formative role that public bureaucracies play in shaping the character and meaning of the polity.

The goal of Cook’s book is to legitimate the constitutive role of public administration, thus opening up "a whole world of possibilities closed off by an exclusively instrumental conception....These possibilities include the improvement of the conduct of the public’s business...[and] the resuscitation of the American people’s understanding of and energetic engagement in self-government (p. 22)." Cook, however, is quick to point out that he is not exclusively interested in recovering the constitutive role of public administration. He is interested in the constitutiveness of public administration "in combination with its obvious instrumental qualities. It is an appreciation for the combination of the instrumental and the constitutive that lies at the heart of a political understanding of public administration....[T]his is the basic fact on which progress in any debate about public bureaucracy’s role in the American system of self-government must be built. That basic fact, moreover, can only be fully appraised in historical context, for the way our effort to comprehend and address public administration has unfolded has had a profound effect on the authority, competence, and legitimacy it has come to possess in the regime (p. 22)."

In Chapters 2-5, Cook uses historical analysis to show how the instrumental and constitutive roles of public administration have played out in key political debates throughout our history. His "method is to describe how political leaders have thought and spoken about public administration in the practice of politics, through their own words or the interpretations of scholars and commentator....using the most familiar and widely studied stages of American political development... (p. 26)". Cook uses the periods of the founding, Jacksonian democracy, progressive reform, and New Deal politics to explore how the idea of public administration has fared in the face of constantly expanding populist aspirations (p. 29). In each of these periods Cook shows how the democratic idea has succeed in keeping public administration in a continual subordinate, dependent, and minimized role. Despite this "first language" of subordination and instrumentalism, Cook demonstrates that until the 1930s there has always been a "second language" emphasizing the salutary role of an independent and constitutive public bureaucracy.

In Chapter 2 Cook shows how the democratic ideology of the Revolution supported a "conception of administration as temporary, subordinate to legislating, and simply a tool...to suit the hierarchical, and thus demonstrably instrumental, design of a military command structure (p. 31)." But constitutive views were expressed in the writings of Sam Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison and were very much at the center of the 1789 debates in Congress over the reach of the President’s power to removal his cabinet officers. The question before Congress in 1789 was whether special constitutional status should be granted to department heads, thus protecting them from arbitrary removal by the President. The outcome of this debate "was a decisive reinforcement of the idea of administration as principally if not exclusively an instrumental link to popular rule ...[thus forging a] link most closely to the presidency through the emphasis on executive unity. Who held the controlling end of Madison’s chain of dependence - the president or Congress - would, however, become the source of continuing and sometimes bitter dispute (p. 44)."

Cook notes the irony of the removal debates of 1789 and the pattern they set for subsequent stages of American political development. Reformers have continued to insist on the addition of more democracy and "more sharply honed instrumental conceptions of and designs for public administration, tied in most but not all instances to the presidency." The irony is that these reform efforts "have actually increased [administration’s] political independence (. p 45)."

This irony began to surface more clearly in the aftermath of the 1789 debates. While the democratic ideology of subordinate, instrumental administration overwhelmed the perspective of the 1789 advocates for a constitutive role, a growing gap began to emerge "between what was publicly pronounced and accepted and what was increasingly practiced with respect to the role of public administration (p. 64)." This emerging gap spawned Jacksonian efforts to bring the agencies of government under tighter democratic control. After a careful review of the debates over renewing the national bank charter and the introduction of the spoils system, Cook concludes that the Jacksonian response, "which centered on strengthening democratic control under the president and the party...only exacerbated the tensions and contradictions between the developing rhetoric and ideology and the fundamental reality of administration as a vital component in the ongoing construction of the regime. The strains created were particularly acute because the Jacksonian rhetorical response did not fully comport with Jacksonians’ own understanding, intentions, and actions regarding administration (p. 64)."

In Chapter 4 Cook continues to examine the strains between populist rhetoric and bureaucratic reality through the lens of three major reform efforts at the turn of the century: the creation of a merit system, the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the progressive movement. Cook exhibits painstaking care and scholarship in examining these debates, showing how the constitutive role for public administration played an increasingly less important role in the discussions. For example, in the debates over the Pendleton Act, each side tried to "prove that its approach to filling federal offices would create a bureaucracy more obedient to the popular will. Unlike 1789 or 1834-35, the discussion in 1882-83 did not stimulate the kind of thinking that grasped the constitutive dimension in administration in a way that might have led to an alternative conceptualization and design for public administration in the American regime (p. 78)." The debates over the formation of the ICC were a different story, however, stimulating "extraordinary thinking and deliberation about administration and its proper character and place in the American governmental and political system (p. 84)." The hopeful signs that citizens and elected officials would openly and creatively address the constitutive role of public administration were soon emasculated, however, by the Progressive Reform Era which "served largely to reinforce the prevailing conception of administration as purely instrumental and subordinate to popular will (p. 94)."

In Chapter 6 Cook completes his historical survey of the way in which the administrative function of government has been historically perceived, focusing on the political events of the New Deal and three post-New Deal movements: 1) The New Liberalism of the late 1960s and 1970s, 2) Reagan conservatism, and the 3) New paradigm of governance (represented by Gaebler and Osborne and the Gore Commission). The main sections of Chapter 6 are devoted to a careful and detailed examination of both the programmatic goals of the New Deal and the organizational methods to achieve these goals. In the process Cook provides an excellent summary of a large body of complex scholarship. The author emerges from this summary concluding that the New Deal was an unqualified victory for populist ideals at both the programmatic and organizational levels. At a programmatic level Roosevelt succeeded, like President Jackson, in making a plebiscitarian President the instrument for expressing the popular will. Roosevelt successfully used this authority to achieve "a transformation in the conception of rights and integrated it into a social services or welfare conception of the positive state. In other words, insuring the delivery of basic social services, now often referred to as the social "safety net," was the same as protecting and advancing individual rights (p. 110)."

At an organizational level, Cook’s careful examination of the Brownlow Report and the Congressional debates on the President’s Commission on Administrative Management demonstrates a striking similarity to the contest between President Andrew Jackson and Congressional Whigs in 1835. Both endorsed a view of administration that was subordinate and instrumental to the popular will embodied in the President. However, Cook finds one striking difference in these debates. In the reorganization debates of 1937 there "is the stunning absence of any attempt to articulate alternative ideas about public administration and its place in the regime....In the end, then, the representatives and senators of the Seventy-fifth Congress never actually confronted the challenge of trying to define for themselves what constituted an executive officer (p. 120)." The New Deal represents the total triumph of the instrumental and subordinate vision of public administration that was always dominate but never unchallenged.

In the final sections of Chapter 5 Cook points out how the New Deal conception of public administrations as the central instrument of a programmatic liberal state has been sustained, with modification, in the post-New Deal political order. The modifications consist of making public administration the chief instrument for carrying out the new mandates of the "popular will" - decentralizing, defunding, deregulating, and privatizing . Cook observes that the political movements of the post-New Deal political order have only sharpened and extended a subordinate, instrumental conception of administration. They have, further, sustained the New Deal’s success in expunging from public debate any coherent alternative conception of administration’s role that might acknowledge its constitutiveness (p. 130)." Cook concludes with the observation that while the myth of neutral agency has been purified, "public agencies are involved in shaping public aims and relations between citizens in ever more subtle and complex ways. The rift between public understanding and political rhetoric on the one hand, and governmental and political realities on the other, has grown, and the public swings back and forth between revolt and anomie (p. 130)."

In the final two chapters Cook presents his case for officially recognizing the legitimacy of the constitutive role that public administration unavoidably plays in furthering the goals of our democratic polity. He develops this case in three parts: In the first part of Chapter 6 Cook documents the unintended and counterproductive consequences of adhering to the instrumental model of administration; In the second half of the Chapter Cook illustrates how bureaucratic institutions unavoidably perform a constitutive role and how this role can be used to facilitate the achievement of the ends of our democratic polity. Finally, in Chapter 7 Cook explores some of the implications of adopting the constitutive model for educating administrators for career public service and for performing their constitutive roles in the policy making and implementation process.

One of the primary reasons we need to abandon the instrumental model of administration, Cook argues, is that it leads to a vicious downward cycle of "automatic, formulaic administration of solutions to societal problems" and a search for technological solutions carried out by "experts" and "managers" of one kind or another that reinforce "among citizens the sense of loss of control, even of subservience, to machines and to bureaucrats.... An increasingly vicious circle has emerged in which anxiety about control and accountability of public administration has led to more extensive, more complex controls which in turn have increased bureaucratic distance between administrators and the public they are expected to serve. This raises new worries about control and accountability and brings about the introduction of another layer of controls (pp. 134-35)."

A second reason we need to abandon the instrumental model of administration is that it restricts our capacity to use the distinctive attributes of our administrative institutions to promote a system of healthy democratic governance. In what I regard as the best section of his analysis, Cook draws on a variety of writings to show how the structure, processes, and setting of administrative agencies enable them to make unique contributions to a well functioning system of ordered liberty. For example, because public administration is situated between the aspirations embodied in statutory goals and the need to make these aspirations achievable operationally "more than any other institution it helps to develop among citizens an appreciation that popular demands for action must be balanced against prior agreements etched in statutes, tradition, and constitutional principle (p. 153)." Because of its daily contact with citizens, public administration "is in a position to help citizens cultivate an appreciation for practical reason and to help them practice it (p.153)." From an institutional perspective "public administration is the institutional home for rationality in the public sphere, although unlike the courts, agencies embody a form of practical reason that is both retrospective and prospective and takes account of both historical and social facts (p. 154)". Finally, the daily exercise of discretion in the public administration arena provides democratic citizens and leaders with observable opportunities to test and establish appropriate limits for the exercise of responsible political discretion (p. 154). In all of these ways public administration provides an opportunity to foster the kind of deliberative system of representation that both the federalist and antifederalists believed was necessary for the long-term health and survival of our democratic polity.

In the final chapter Cook explores some of the implications of his argument for the education of career administrators and for policy design and implementation. Cook argues that career administrators need to have a liberal education that is well grounded in the kind of political science set forth in the Elkin and Soltan volume. It is an education that recognizes the raison d’être of administration, namely the necessity to act. Cook reminds us that the core of action is practical reason - the conjoining of principles of what is right with considerations of what is suitable. Cook regards public administration as the "champion of practical reason within the regime. To allow the absence of such a champion to continue is surely to put the regime at peril (p. 178)."

Cook points out the significant salutary consequences for policy development that can arise from a recognition of this distinct constitutive role that public administration plays in our regime. It "would transform how policy makers react to the incentives they face. With a firm knowledge of the formative bearing of political institutions generally, and the constitutiveness of administration specifically, policy makers, especially legislators, would be more cognizant of the consequences - wasted money and burdens on citizens - of neglecting administration in policy design (p. 165)." In short, policy making would proceed with more initial and ongoing analysis of the administrative conditions and resources necessary for success.

Cook ends his exploration with a summary of where he stands on the quarrel between Lowi and Rohr on the central political problem that public administration poses for a liberal democratic constitutional regime: What role should administration be encouraged to play in filling the space between what the law can easily and clearly grasp and the opportunity to shape the aims of the polity and the character of the citizenry beyond the expressed intent of the law. Lowi’s "juridical democracy" calls for pulling the state back into line with what the law can grasp, while Rohr seeks to legitimate the reach of the state as it stands, but also to ensure that it is guided by the higher law and purpose of the Constitution. Cook sides with Lowi’s reliance on greater formalism in which bargaining and log-rolling is confined to formal rule making and not to individual cases. Cook argues that this approach still leaves administration with "plenty of discretion to adapt to changing circumstances and to undertake the arduous task of understanding and responding to complex, multifaceted problems (p. 168)." This conclusion rests on Cook’s assumption that "democratic politics, particularly the debate and deliberation associated with legislative forums,...must stand at center stage (p. 177)." The question of what should stand at center stage within our constitutional system of governance goes to the heart of the matter in the debate over the proper role of bureaucracy within our democratic polity.

The four books under review are a wonderfully rich antidote to the narrow instrumental view of administration that is currently reflected in the reinvention of government debate and Vice President Gore’s Peformance Initiative. The books remind us that what should be at the heart of the matter in these debates is the rich political tradition and a set of administrative practices that treats bureaucracy within a larger framework of our system of constitutional governance. In so doing, the books introduce a concern for citizenship, checks and balances, separation of powers, federalism, public spiritedness, reputation, honor, virtuous leadership, the interdependence of social and political institutions, and the corrosive consequences of excessive individualism. This expanded universe of discourse raises the two questions that are most frequently begged by most reform-oriented initiatives: Will the proposed reform further the ends of our system of constitutional governance? What is the appropriate role of the bureaucracy in achieving these ends?

While all of the books under review agree that the primary purpose of our system of constitutional governance is to protect individual liberty, they are in some disagreement about the factors that most endanger this liberty. For Spicer it is the abuse of power by officialdom in the first instance and the citizenry at large in the second instance. For both Elkin/Soltan and Richardson, the danger is in crafting policies that inadequately take into account the need for, and the impact on, social institutions and the character of the citizenry. In agreeing with Richardson and Elkin/Soltan, Cook is worried about restoring the constitutive role of government, particularly at the administrative level, without undermining the primacy of the legislative function.

Taken together these books reformulate the question for democratic reform by recovering the problematic nature of preserving a regime of ordered liberty. Before undertaking political, bureaucratic, or constitutional reform, these books invite us to ask the following five questions which focus on the ingredients that are most critical to the health of our constitutional regime of ordered liberty: 1) To what extent does the reform protect us from the King George problem - the excessive exercise of power by officialdom? 2) To what extent does the reform protect us from the Shay’s Rebellion problem - excessive exercise of power by a tyrannical majorities at the expense of minority rights? 3) To what extent does the reform protect us from the George Washington problem - incapacity of government institutions and agents to act energetically and competently? 4) To what extent does the proposed reform pay proper regard for the mediating social and economic institutions? 5) To what extent does the reform take into account the character of the citizenry and the leadership needed to support the reform?

The books under review concede an important role for the bureaucracy and career public administrators in serving as both keepers of these questions and active agents in preserving the health of our democratic polity. But this role is significantly jeopardized by adhering to a narrowly instrumental view of administration. By expanding the universe of administrative discourse to include a noninstrumental administrative activities, the authors remind us of two key ingredients of maintaining a healthy system of constitutional governance: 1) A variety of libertarian wolves need to be kept in sheep’s clothing; and 2) The bureaucratic wolf may be put to good use in keeping other libertarian wolves at bay.

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